I won't say anything for this chapter, except that I'm proud of the last part and feel a great emotional connection to it.

Enjoy.

-

Chapter 13

The forgotten dream

Katara pov.

They were moving at a rational speed, nothing putting too much pressure on a pregnant woman – a pregnant woman, who was deadly sick because of the firebender growing inside her.

She looked paler than usually, and she would suddenly faint out of nowhere. Sometimes she'd spontaneously fall to the ground in screams, holding her hands to her stomach or throat. It wasn't something that happened every day, but maybe once a week. But at some point she would be so sick, that she couldn't leave her room anymore.

Zuko seemed to be thinking the same. He raised his hand towards Mai, holding a red fire lilly.

Katara flipped the curtain so it cut off her view.

"Easy there, princess," Toph said.

Katara turned towards her with burning eyes. Even if the blind girl couldn't see her frustration, it was one way to get it out.

"Why are you so uptight, anyway?"

Katara shook her head. "You wouldn't understand."

With a snort Toph hammered her foot in the floor, making a stool made of stone to appear out of the floor, forcing Katara to sit down.

"Try me."

Katara pouted, fiddled with her hands, meddled with her hair, smoothed out her skirt.

"He's forgotten me," she murmured.

"Who? Wonderboy? Naah, he's just doing what's right," Toph said.

"Doing what's right?" Katara exclaimed. "Forgetting your pregnant wife is right?"

"That's not what I'm saying," Toph tried to correct calmly.

"Well, I'm sorry I can't be as open-minded and indulgent as you are, but –"

"Zuko is afraid Mai might die. Doesn't it make sense for him to spent time with her?"

It was like Toph had planted a fit in the middle of Katara's face. She felt numbed by the words.

When Katara first became pregnant, Zuko pretty much forgot all about everyone else and concentrated about her. She'd felt important and loved. Now he was doing the same thing towards Mai. Mai had to be feeling the same way as Katara had.

Was Katara feeling the same way as Mai had before?

She shook her head ran her hand through her curly hair, thinking about the situation from as many aspects as she could, which didn't go very well. Love was irrational, and it made on incapable of seeing other sides than one's own.

"Can Mai really die?" Katara asked.

"I trained with her a little while ago, and her heart was acting really strange. If she puts too much pressure on her body, I think she could die even before she gets to the point in her pregnancy that you are at now."

Katara shuddered. To think that Mai didn't have much time left … To think that she'd soon be gone … It was weird, and it was creepy. She couldn't be happy about it, even if it meant that she would get Zuko for herself. It was wrong that things was going this way.

"Poor Zuko," she murmured.

"Poor Zuko?" Toph asked. "I'd rather say 'poor Mai'!"

Katara shrugged and looked away.

She didn't have much to pity that woman.

-

"And then he said that if she was sane, then he'd eat five bowls of fire flakes without drinking nanything afterwards," Sokka finished, cracking up, holding his stomach, and trying to hold back hysterics.

Katara and Suki both looked at him with raised eyebrows.

"I still don't get your humor," Katara finally concluded. She shook her head.

Suki sighed in relief and grabbed Katara's arm. "I'm so glad that I'm not alone any more. I get to relax from that airhead."

"Hey!" Sokka shouted, jumping in front of them. "Don't insult me when I'm right there!"

"Fine," Suki agreed. "Then go talk with Aang or Zuko or someone like that."

Her suggestion made Katara laugh.

"Oh, so that's funny?" Sokka asked. "Women! No humor at all!"

With an extremely characteristically angry face, he marched towards the palace.

As Katara and Suki walked, those near to them stopped to bow before they continued their doings.

"How do you live with it?" Suki asked. "How can you become used to people bowing for you and speaking to you like you're the goddess of the world?"

"I don't go out much," Katara responded.

"Ah," Suki giggled. She smiled a sad smile. "But it must be hard for you. After everything that happened … Are you okay with just being a wife and nothing more?"

Katara blushed and corrected the way her dress was folding.

"I know what you must be thinking, but I chose this," she said.

"You didn't choose it knowing what it would be like. He has three other wives, Katara!" Suki hissed, trying hard to say it in a way so no one would hear it.

"I'll just have to deal with that," Katara responded.

"You always wanted so much more, Katara. What if you don't become the First Wife? What will you have lived for?"

Katara felt a headache coming on, and she put her hand to the hurting forehead.

Suki was a warrior. She got to be on the front line with the other Kyoshi warriors. She got to follow Sokka around.

She couldn't understand. Never.

"I don't think you can ever be happy before you fulfill what you began," Suki continued.

"I didn't begin anything," Katara growled, feeling that she had to say something. "I wanted to begin, but –"

"Zuko got in the way."

Katara scowled at her.

"Do you think you would have been happier if you hadn't given him your heart? If you hadn't become his wife and instead chased your dream?" Suki asked.

"No," Katara responded bluntly. "I don't. That dream was unrealistic."

"Not if you'd followed it with your heart."

"Suki, I made a choice. I'm living with it. Leave it be."

Suki blushed and lowered her eyes with a nod. "Let's go back to the palace," she murmured.

Katara didn't respond. She simply dragged Suki on with her in the same steps that Sokka had taken.

The people around them were honorable and all bowed as they moved by. Their clothes were beautiful, and Katara wondered what it was like being them, having the merits of being nobility, but lacking the power and duty of being royalty.

The big, ornamented gate closed behind them with a loud bump, and Katara felt her body shake a little at the shock. She shook her head at herself. She really needed to go out more.

"Can we have dinner together tonight?" she asked Suki.

"Of course! Even if I have to force him to eat the food here." Suki rolled her eyes, and Katara chuckled.

Then Katara spotted Azula and Ty Lee on their way towards the gate, talking about something seemingly serious.

"Where are you going?"

Katara couldn't help asking.

Ty Lee's head snapped up, like she was afraid Katara might have heard something.

Azula slowly raised her eyes, smiling viciously.

They passed without saying anything.

After the gate had closed, Suki shuddered.

"She's really terrifying," she whispered.

"You sort of get used to it," Katara promised.

"I just hope I'm not around enough to get to that point," Suki declared.

Katara got her point.

-

The dress was soft and felt almost like water in her hands. Silk always made it tingle inside her, made her feel strangely at home, even if they never wore this kind of clothes at home.

It was another one of Sokka's gifts. It was from the Earth Kingdom, but he had gotten it made in blue with a turquoise belt.

She looked at it with sad eyes and wondered when she'd get to take it on. Sokka hadn't thought about the fact that she was pregnant, and that she couldn't wear it yet. The few dressed he'd given her, that she could wear already, were those Suki had taken care of.

She sighed yet again and left it lying on her bed, like a sad memorial of a different time and place.

She remembered what Suki had said on their walk earlier. Had Katara changed since she had not felt the same way when Suki mentioned her dream? She didn't have that old fire flaming up with the very mentioning. She didn't start planning how to get to work right away. She simply thought about her life with Zuko, which was, all things considered, very quietly. Even if she was in the middle of the war, knowing everything that was going on … She was outside. She wasn't one of the warriors. She wasn't Azula. She wasn't her brother. She was Katara. A Katara that had changed. A Katara without the old dream that made her fight for what she believed in.

She walked out to her bathroom and looked into the huge mirror that took up an entire wall for itself.

She looked into the mirror, looked at the bulging stomach that was growing second by second.

Yes. She had changed.

She put her hand on the bulge and closed her eyes.

That dream of hers had meant everything. Ever since she was little … Even if things had been different in the southern tribe …

It was still the same. Basically.

"I'm still the same," she realized then, and she let her hand drop. "I'm still a prisoner."

She hid her face in her hands and burst into tears. The cold floor hit her, but she only noticed because she broke into pieces. She was an ice crystal, breaking into thousands tiny diamonds. A broken façade that could never become whole again.

Zuko didn't come and put the pieces back up together.

And how should he have been able to?

He wasn't a water bender.

-

The wind was traveling south, for a change. All the flowers and straws of grass, all the leafs on the trees and all the little branches, they all turned that way.

Feeling her hair moving with them, like in a muted symphony, a dance with no music. The begging of this song, a screaming desire with no form, reached her heart with an aching pain, and she reached up on her head, towards the diadem that she always wore. She released the knob on top of her head, letting only the two traditional hair lopes from the Water Tribe stay in place. They weren't even lopes anymore … They were merely two tendrils, held by the two pearls that should be blue … But she'd changed them to red. For Zuko. To fit in. For the Fire Nation.

Somewhere down there … In the garden. Some garden … They were walking together, probably laughing while he put his hand on her stomach, just like he'd done with her.

Her hair was dancing so wildly with the wind, that her vision was blocked.

She didn't belong here. She belonged in the South Pole. Suki was right. What had she become? A wife? She knew she could more than that. Her childhood on the South Pole … All the women … Her skills, her ambitions, her dream! It was all there. Not here, not in this warm place that seemed so cold to her heart. It wasn't right. They didn't accept her here. She'd seen how they looked at her.

"My dream," she mumbled, moving into a daze by the hypnotizing movement of her hair. Upwards. South.

Her hands. Her feet. Her body.

Her eyes.

The sky was so blue, the sea was calling, the ice was so cold, the snow was so white.

The grass was so green.

A terrified scream reached her.

"Katara!"